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’Tis not in mortals to command success, / But we’ll do more, Sempronius—we’ll deserve it. ~Addison

’Tis the divinity that stirs within us; / ’Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, / And intimates eternity to man. ~Addison

Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health, and is as friendly to the mind as to the body. ~Addison

Content thyself to be obscurely good; / When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, / The post of honour is a private station. ~Addison

Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatsoever. ~Addison

Devotion, when it does not lie under the check of reason, is apt to degenerate into enthusiasm (fanaticism). ~Addison

Every passion gives a particular cast to the countenance, and is apt to discover itself in some feature or other. ~Addison

Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant, accommodates itself to the meanest capacities, silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. ~Addison

Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears least. ~Addison

Goodman Fact is allowed by everybody to be a plain-spoken person, and a man of very few words; tropes and figures are his aversion. ~Addison

Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more aimiable than beauty. ~Addison

If any false step be made in the more momentous concerns of life, the whole scheme of ambitious designs is broken. ~Addison

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is. ~Addison

In the unhappy man forget the foe. ~Addison

Inward cheerfulness is an implicit praise and thanksgiving to Providence under all its dispensations. ~Addison

It is impossible for any man to form a right judgment of his neighbour’s sufferings. ~Addison

It is the work of a philosopher to be every day subduing his passions and laying aside his prejudices. ~Addison

Justice may be furnished out of fire, as far as her sword goes; and courage may be all over a continual blaze. ~Addison

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. ~Addison

Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. ~Addison

Learn never to repine at your own misfortunes, or to envy the happiness of another. ~Addison

Love is not to be reason’d down or lost / In high ambition or a thirst of greatness. ~Addison

Man is the merriest species of the creation. ~Addison

Man’s conviction should be strong, and so well timed that worldly advantages may seem to have no share in it. ~Addison

Man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. ~Addison

Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition, and, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it. ~Addison

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity. ~Addison

Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. ~Addison

Much might be said on both sides. ~Addison

Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral and religious feelings. ~Addison

Nature has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of man’s own making. ~Addison

Niggardliness is not good husbandry. ~Addison

No thought is beautiful which is not just, and no thought can be just which is not founded on truth. ~Addison

One may often find as much thought on the reverse of a medal as in a canto of Spenser. ~Addison

Our friends see not our faults, or conceal them, or soften them. ~Addison

Patience had no sooner placed herself by the mount of sorrows, but the whole heap sunk to such a degree, that it did not appear a third part so big as it was before. ~Addison

Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance. ~Addison

Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry and casts resolution itself into despair. ~Addison

Pride flows from want of reflection and ignorance of ourselves. Knowledge and humility come upon us together. ~Addison

Quick sensibility is inseparable from a ready understanding. ~Addison

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm. ~Addison

Some virtues are only seen in affliction, and some in prosperity. ~Addison

Speak that I may see thee. ~Addison

The even and cheerful temper makes us pleasing to ourselves, to those with whom we converse, and to Him whom we were made to please. ~Addison

The family is the proper province for private women to shine in. ~Addison

The jealous man’s disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment. ~Addison

The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them, or, as the Italian proverb says, “The man who lives by hope will die by despair.” ~Addison

The proverb says of the Genoese, that they have a sea without fish, lands without trees, and men without faith. ~Addison

The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married. ~Addison

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself / Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; / But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, / Unhurt amidst the war of elements, / The wrecks of matter and the crash of worlds. ~Addison

The true art of being agreeable is to appear well pleased with all the company, and rather to seem well entertained with them than to bring entertainment to them. ~Addison

The woman that deliberates is lost. ~Addison

There is no defence against reproach but obscurity. ~Addison

There is no real life but cheerful life. ~Addison

There is not in earth a spectacle more worthy than a great man superior to his sufferings. ~Addison

Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholy. ~Addison

Unbounded courage and compassion join’d, / Tempting each other in the victor’s mind, / Alternately proclaim him good and great, / And make the hero and the man complete. ~Addison

We are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. ~Addison

Wit is a pernicious thing when it is not tempered with virtue and humanity. ~Addison

Without discretion learning is pedantry and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness. The best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. ~Addison

Young men soon give, and soon forget affronts; old age is slow in both. ~Addison

Certain it is that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as that of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express. ~Addison